Galerie Andreas Brändström

There seems to be no limit to the unpleasant surprises Lars Nilsson offers his viewers. After making numerous video pieces that included scenes of explicit and often violent pornography, he has moved on to straight gore. Nilsson’s recent installation Only Words, 1996, consisted of a brutally mutilated male body hanging in midair; the head, one arm, and both legs had been cut off, leaving only the torso covered in awful flesh wounds. On the floor there were large pools of what seemed to be fresh blood, and the walls were splattered in red as if this massacre had been performed with a chain saw. In a corner of the room lay the body’s decapitated head, the eyes wide open.

This abhorrent mutilation was staged with the help of artisans who work for Madame Tussaud’s, and the result was at once shockingly real and fantastical, as if one had entered a horror movie. This work is linked most specifically